I'll throw in my opinion as someone new to the hobby (<1 year) who is considering moving to mashing. While the money/size issue is all well and good, my hesitation comes from the actual time investment in building a setup like the ones shown in this thread. Call me lazy, but when I look at the pictures and tips on valve's, drilling out spigots, removing braiding from a sink hose, etc, well I tend to tune out. It leaves me thinking, isn't there some way I can but a cheap cooler and do this without having to dig out the tools and make a trip to home depot?
Yeah, maybe I'm being too lazy, but for a first try at attempting something like this, simpler is better and not having to spend a few hours on a trip to home depot and mutilating a cooler would make me more likely to give it a shot.
The whole point of the braided hose, drilling out spigot, etc as far as I can tell is to allow you to drain water and rinse the grains without getting the grains into your wort.
My question is this, does the actual mechanism of how this 'filter' works have much impact on extraction efficiancy? What I'm getting at is, what would happen if I just went and bought a 5 gallon cooler, lined it with a grain/muslin/cheesecloth bag, or just put my 5 lbs of gain in a big mesh bad, and then used the cooler as is with no modifications? Would I get poor extraction? The only downside I can see is a potential sore thumb from having to hold a spigot button down, but if you could find a cooler with a spigot that can be latched open, that's not an issue. The upside is that I can go buy a cooler and get started right away with no tools or hardware store trips needed. This would be especially appealing to younger apartment dwellers who may be lacking in tools anyway...
Thoughts?